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KAMPALA — Uganda’s ambitious march toward the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is facing uncomfortable scrutiny after a damning Value for Money audit exposed serious coordination failures within the Office of the Prime Minister, piling pressure on the leadership of the country’s SDG Secretariat.
At the centre of the unfolding accountability debate is Albert Byamugisha, the Senior Technical Adviser and Head of the National SDG Secretariat, the technical unit tasked with coordinating Uganda’s implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals across government institutions, development partners and local governments.
But according to the latest audit by the Office of the Auditor General of Uganda, the system meant to drive the country’s SDG agenda is struggling with weak coordination, inactive oversight structures and limited awareness at grassroots level.
Uganda committed to implementing the SDGs in 2015 when world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The goals were subsequently integrated into national development frameworks such as the National Development Plans and aligned with Uganda’s Vision 2040.
The Office of the Prime Minister was designated as the lead institution responsible for coordinating the implementation of the goals, bringing together government ministries, development partners and non-state actors through coordination structures and Technical Working Groups.
Between the financial years 2020/2021 and 2024/2025, government allocated UGX 31.4 billion to strengthen SDG coordination and monitoring through the Strategic Coordination and Implementation Department and the Monitoring and Evaluation Department within OPM.
On paper, Uganda has remained active in global reporting processes and has already presented three Voluntary National Reviews to the international community.
But the audit now suggests that behind the polished reports lies a troubling operational reality.
According to the 2025 UN Sustainable Development Report, Uganda currently ranks 142 out of 167 countries, with an SDG index score of 55.8 out of 100, only slightly above the Sub-Saharan Africa regional average of 53.9.
While progress has been registered in areas such as health, clean water and access to energy, the country continues to face major challenges in poverty reduction, food security, education quality and gender equality.
The audit reveals that the structures responsible for coordinating these efforts have been largely ineffective.
One of the most striking findings is that the National SDG Taskforce, which should provide strategic direction for the agenda, did not meet as required.
Even more alarming is the inactivity of the Technical Working Groups meant to drive implementation.
Auditors found that only 25 percent of the planned Technical Working Group meetings were held over a five-year period, leaving major policy and coordination gaps.
One particular Technical Working Group — the one responsible for Coordination, Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting — performed the worst.
In fact, the auditors made a stunning discovery.
“The Technical Working Group responsible for Coordination, Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting did not meet at all during the period and achieved none of its 14 responsibilities,” the report states.
For analysts, that revelation raises serious questions about oversight within the SDG coordination structures operating under the Office of the Prime Minister and the National SDG Secretariat headed by Dr. Byamugisha.
The audit also exposed structural confusion within OPM itself.
Investigators found that the SDG Secretariat and other coordination units were performing overlapping roles, creating blurred lines of authority.
“The audit identified duplication of roles between the SDG Secretariat and the Coordination, Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting structures within OPM, resulting in unclear accountability and weakened oversight,” the report notes.
This duplication has created a bureaucratic maze in which responsibilities are unclear and coordination suffers.
Observers say the confusion inevitably shifts the spotlight to the leadership of the SDG Secretariat, which is expected to provide the technical backbone for coordination of Uganda’s SDG agenda.
Beyond the walls of the Prime Minister’s office, the audit uncovered an even more worrying disconnect between national policy and local implementation.
During field visits, auditors discovered that awareness of the SDGs at the district and community levels remains extremely low.
In several districts visited during the audit, SDG communication materials were nowhere to be found and many local leaders interviewed had little understanding of the global development goals.
“The awareness and understanding of the SDGs remained low at the local government and community levels,” the report states.
“SDG communication materials were not existing in the districts visited, and most local leaders interviewed lacked basic knowledge of the SDGs and their relevance to service delivery.”
This lack of awareness has severely undermined the localisation of the SDGs — a key principle that requires development goals to be translated into district-level planning and implementation.
Although Uganda has achieved significant alignment of SDG targets with national development plans — reaching 95 percent alignment under National Development Plan III and improving to 97 percent under NDP IV — the practical integration of those targets into district planning remains weak.
The audit found that District Development Plans rarely map their priorities to specific SDG indicators.
As a result, it is difficult to track how local government actions contribute to national SDG outcomes.
Even more revealing is the fact that only one of the ten sampled districts had conducted a Voluntary Local Review, a key accountability mechanism used globally to measure SDG progress at the local level.
The monitoring and reporting systems meant to track SDG progress are also facing major weaknesses.
Uganda has improved data availability, increasing the number of SDG indicators with available data from 41 in 2019 to 127 in 2024.
However, auditors say the data systems still fail to fully capture the SDG principle of “Leave No One Behind.”
Less than two-thirds of the necessary disaggregation categories for core indicators under Goals 1 to 7 are currently captured in the national SDG framework.
This means the data often does not show how development outcomes affect different groups such as women, youth, rural communities and persons with disabilities.
The audit warns that Uganda’s SDG reporting has become largely descriptive rather than analytical.
“Uganda’s annual SDG assessments over the three years served more as institutional updates than evaluative reviews,” the report states.
In many cases, the reports rely on outdated survey data and lack clear methodologies for measuring progress.
“This SDG reporting risks masking inequalities, undermining evidence-based targeting of vulnerable populations, and weakening the credibility of progress assessments,” the report warns.
Experts say that without robust monitoring systems, policy makers may struggle to identify which communities are falling behind.
The audit further revealed that ministries, departments and local governments have not been adequately involved in setting SDG indicators and targets, further weakening the system’s inclusiveness.
Despite these challenges, the Office of the Prime Minister has established important frameworks and achieved milestones such as integrating SDGs into national development plans and presenting Voluntary National Reviews to the international community.
But the Auditor General concludes that the overall impact of these interventions has been hampered by operational weaknesses and inactive coordination structures.
“Coordination structures, including the National SDG Taskforce and Technical Working Groups, have struggled with inconsistent meetings and overlapping roles, which has derailed policy decisions for effective implementation of SDGs,” the report states.
As Uganda enters the final stretch toward the 2030 deadline, analysts say the country cannot afford bureaucratic paralysis.
The audit recommends that the Office of the Prime Minister review and clearly define the mandates of the SDG Secretariat and the Coordination, Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting structures to eliminate duplication.
It also calls for strengthening SDG awareness across ministries and districts, improving monitoring systems and ensuring regular meetings of coordination bodies.
For many observers, the report has now put the spotlight squarely on the leadership of the SDG Secretariat.
As one policy expert bluntly put it after reviewing the findings, “The frameworks exist and the structures exist. What Uganda needs now is leadership that turns those structures into results.”
With only a few years remaining before the 2030 deadline, the big question now echoing through government corridors is simple — will the whip finally crack inside the SDG Secretariat?
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